A Christmas Carol, 1994

Join Scrooge, Gingrich And Clinton In A Future Guaranteed To Scare The Dickens Out Of You

December 25, 1994|By Jeff Lyon.

Marley was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail, his body cremated at his own very practical request.

Nonetheless, the sign on the door of the 43rd-floor office on Monroe Street still read "Scrooge and Marley," as it always had, even though Marley had been dead for seven years. Some imagined that this was due to sentiment on Scrooge's part, since he had been Marley's business partner for eons and his sole executor, sole administrator, sole heir, sole friend and sole mourner. But Scrooge had not been so shattered by Marley's death that he could not perform as a consummate man of business on the very day of the funeral, solemnizing it with the closing of a major deal. The simple truth was, he had not taken Marley's name off the glass because he was too cheap to have it done.

Oh, but he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and revealed itself shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head and on his eyebrows; he carried his own low temperature always about with him.

No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. No LaSalle Street bon vivant ever stopped him on the sidewalk to say cheerily, "Hey, Scrooge, old pal, how are you?" preparatory to pulling him into the nearest deli for a spot of lunch. No one ever asked him the time or pressed him for directions. Even the homeless hawking Streetwise averted their eyes when he hobbled along on his cane, for they feared his evil eye.

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked, to edge his way along the crowded paths of life warning away all human sympathy.

One late afternoon on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busily in his office totaling up the week's profits. And what profits! He had plied the world's currency markets like Magellan, cornered pork belly futures on the exchange and come out a winner on several options. His stocks had split, his bonds were holding their own and his Loop real estate was enjoying a smart reversal of the past year's devaluation.

The office door was open so he could keep an eye on his clerk, Bob Cratchit, who sat in a dismal little cubicle typing letters on an ancient PC, which, aside from its basic lack of brainpower, was missing several keys. But Scrooge would not lay out money for a new one.

Nor was there any heat. Scrooge, who kept office rent down by paying his own utilities, had gladly relinquished his coal furnace at the insistence of the Environmental Protection Agency but ignored directives from OSHA that he replace it with a modern gas model. As a result, Cratchit was left to shiver beneath a comforter trying to concentrate. Still, he counted himself lucky. He was one of the few survivors of Scrooge's latest massacre, when 23 people were put on the street in a flash downsizing just days before the Christmas holiday. Scrooge's stated reason for becoming "lean and mean" had been rising interest rates, a stagnant economy and oppressive government regulation, but the mass firing was such an overreaction that most observers considered "lean" a subordinate reason to "mean."

As Scrooge studied his ledgers, a buoyant voice cried, "Merry Christmas, Uncle, God bless you!" It was Scrooge's nephew, who had barged in unannounced, the secretary having been let go. "Bah," snorted Scrooge. "Humbug."

"Christmas a humbug, Uncle? Surely you don't mean that?"

"I do," replied Scrooge. "What business have you being so merry? You're poor, aren't you?"

"Well," returned the nephew, "where do you get off being morose? You're rich, aren't you?"

"Humbug," Scrooge again grumped. "How can I not be morose when I live in a world of fools like this? What good is Christmas to anybody but a time for paying bills from an overdrawn account, for finding oneself a year older and not an hour richer? If I could work my will, every idiot who says `Merry Christmas' would be electrocuted by a string of lights or drowned in a sea of eggnog. Nephew, keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine."

"There are many things that have done me good without improving my bank balance," responded the nephew. "I've always thought of Christmas as a kind, charitable time, the only time I know when women and men open their hearts to people of lesser means as if they were fellow passengers on the way to the grave. So even if Christmas never put a dollar in my pocket, I say, `God bless it.' "

At this, Cratchit involuntarily cheered. He immediately recognized his impropriety and ducked below his comforter.